Calgary's Laurie and Darrell Szczerba held an oversized cheque for $30 million after claiming the Lotto Max prize on Feb. 22, 2013.Colleen De Neve
/ Calgary Herald

This is the Petro-Canada station in Marda Loop where a $30-million lottery winner verified his ticket.Gavin Young
/ Calgary Herald

A lottery winner was heading for an appointment at the Smilin’ Buddha tattoo parlour in Marda Loop before discovering he had won the $30-million jackpot, verified at a Petro-Canada station nearby.Gavin Young
/ Calgary Herald

This is the Petro-Canada station in Marda Loop where a $30-million lottery winner verified his ticket.Gavin Young
/ Calgary Herald

Last Saturday, Darrell Szczerba couldn’t contact his wife Laurie by cell phone. She’d been getting her nails done and had the ringer off.

So, he had to wait until she got home to tell her the news: they’d just won $30 million in the Lotto Max lottery. “I couldn’t sit there with a winning ticket in my pocket,” says Darrell, who promptly cancelled his appointment at Smilin’ Buddha for a new tattoo on his leg.

Today, the husband and wife of three decades, parents to two adult sons, can lay claim to being the biggest lottery winners in Calgary history — the closest, in 2005, coming in at half that, $12.5 milion.

“It was crazy, I had a half hour to kill before my appointment, so I went to the gas station to check my tickets and get a cold drink,” Darrell, who’s worked in construction for 37 years, told the media at a press conference Friday. “I didn’t get that drink.”

The couple plans to buy a bigger house and “go on a few trips to places we’ve always dreamed about,” said Laurie, a legal assistant who, like her husband, quit her job on Tuesday.

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